Thought Leaders: Kyle Orland

By Stu Horvath

Innovation takes many forms within the gaming space, often
beginning with insight and inspiration from a single person, be they a
game developer, an engineer, a sociologist or anything else within the
industry. That’s why we’re tracking down these
thought leaders to give you a sneak peek of the digital arts future
through their eyes.

In this installment, we
sit down with Kyle Orland, a games journalist who writes for Gamasutra. Orland
gives his thoughts on the impact journalism will have on the future of
gaming and the relationship between the two.

DIG: Can you tell us about your history in the gaming industry?

Kyle
Orland: I started playing games in 1989 with my first
NES, started writing about games in 1997 with Super Mario Bros.
HQ, a fan site that is still up (though not rigorously
maintained), and started writing about games professionally in 2001,
when I got paid $8 to write a review of DanceDance
Revolution for the University of Maryland student paper,
The Diamondback. (Go Terps!) In the decade since,
I’ve somehow made a full-time living as a freelancer for
outlets including Electronic Gaming Monthly,Paste magazine, @Gamer,
National Public Radio, Joystiq, GameSpot.com,
Gamasutra and a bunch of others that
don’t even exist anymore.

DIG: Where do you see the industry going in the near future? Far future?

K.O.:
In the near future, companies are going to continue to
try to carve out a slice of the large casual/social gaming pie, making
free-to-play games that are easy to start, easy to get addicted to, but
which ultimately go nowhere. The bottom will eventually fall out of this
market, as most of the people who got by just fine before
FarmVille will eventually get tired of playing the
same type of game over and over and go back to the largely game-free
life they led before Facebook.

I know a lot of
people are trying to make games that transition this model to deeper,
more engaging long-term experiences, but I think it’s hard to
find the balance between accessibility and depth to make that work. I
also think a lot of the casual/social game players really
don’t want that kind of depth and are just looking for
something to while away some time so they don’t have to spend
it reflecting on their life.

Longer-term, I
see gaming getting much more integrated into everyday living. We have
yet to see the first truly mass-market location-aware game. (Foursquare comes closest, I
suppose.) But as smartphones become more ubiquitous, I think someone
will figure out how to tap this kind of data for a truly engaging social
experience. I think the idea of using voice commands and motions will
become a more natural part of game control too, as that technology
improves in fidelity.

DIG: What kind of technology do you see spurring on those changes?

K.O.:
One technology that really has me excited is
KinectFusion, which uses the Kinect to create a 3D model of a room in
real time, as demonstrated here. In five years, we could
easily see this technology miniaturized and incorporated with some sort
of semitransparent glasses display to create a wearable augmented
reality game system that accurately overlays characters and game
elements over the real world, without the need to awkwardly hold a
camera-equipped 3DS out in front of you or anything!

DIG:
What role do you see external factors like press coverage and public
perception having in the ongoing development of the
industry?

K.O.:
I think people tend to be influenced by what their friends recommend.
Some of those friends might be hardcore gamers who tend to be influenced
by what they see recommended by their favorite press outlet.

More
and more, though, I think people are likely to stumble on a free- or
cheap-to-play game and, if they really love it, act as an evangelist,
sending it around to everyone they know. If that happens enough times,
it becomes a hit. Maybe the press starts that wave of popularity
sometimes, maybe the press picks up on it and follows along with
coverage, or maybe they just dismiss it as not a “real
game” and continue to focus on what they know and love. Either
way, the press’s role as sole opinion-leader is probably
smaller than ever, thanks to the Internet and social media.